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Evaluation of personnel’s brand
involvement in a private
university setting: The case of
MODUL University Vienna
Bachelor Thesis for Obtaining the Degree
Bachelor of Business Administration in
Tourism, Hotel Management and Operations
Submitted to Ms. Lidija Lalicic Ph.D.
Katharina Reichmann
1411067
Vienna, 18th of January 2017
2
Affidavit
I hereby affirm that this Bachelor’s Thesis represents my own written work and that I
have used no sources and aids other than those indicated. All passages quoted from
publications or paraphrased from these sources are properly cited and attributed.
The thesis was not submitted in the same or in a substantially similar version, not even
partially, to another examination board and was not published elsewhere.
2017-01-18
Date Signature
3
Abstract
Branding is nowadays perceived as a universal term in every industry. Also in the
higher education sector, branding recently has become a necessity for marketing a
university as a valuable brand to its future students to gain an edge over their pool of
competitors. The aim of this thesis is, to investigate and explain the ways in which
MODUL University Vienna is involved with the universities brand. Thus, the main goal
of this thesis is furthermore to measure, to which extend the personnel of MODUL
University Vienna is involved into the universities brand. The outcomes of this case
study could be of great importance for MODUL University Vienna, as they could
provide the management of the university with relevant research on the existing
situation among personnel when it comes to brand involvement, and furthermore
provide future improvement ideas concerning this issue.
The main results of the case study showed, that at the moment personnel of MODUL
University Vienna, is already involved with the university’s brand, but this involvement
needs to be strengthened and developed further. In addition, there are slight
differences between the brand perception of faculty and staff of the university.
Especially communication and training need to be enhanced and the existing “gap”
between faculty and staff departments needs to be bridged by taking various actions.
Such actions include, in concrete, the conduction of regular employee meetings and
surveys and regular following employee discussions. Furthermore career
development opportunities need to be designed more attractive to keep the turnover
rates of employees as low as possible. As especially the faculty of the university wishes
to get more information on the brand of the university, a written document of brand
guidelines of the university could be beneficial for “existing” employees. Furthermore
“brand guidelines handbooks” and “brand introduction sessions” could be offered to
new employees of the university to get them familiar with the brand. Lastly regular
meetings on branding guidelines of MODUL University could be held, to trigger
discussions between employees of the university.
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Table of Contents
Affidavit ......................................................................................................................... 2
Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 3
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... 4
List of Figures ................................................................................................................ 6
List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................................... 7
1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 8
1.1 Background information ............................................................................... 8
1.1.1 Research objectives ............................................................................ 10
2 Literature Review ................................................................................................ 11
2.1 Main literature ............................................................................................ 11
2.1.1 Branding .............................................................................................. 11
2.1.2 Internal Branding ................................................................................ 14
2.1.3 University Branding ............................................................................. 16
2.1.4 The various stakeholders of a university brand .................................. 18
2.1.5 Students .............................................................................................. 18
2.1.6 University’s Personnel ......................................................................... 19
2.1.7 Brand Identification ............................................................................ 20
2.1.8 Brand Commitment ............................................................................. 21
2.1.9 Brand Loyalty ...................................................................................... 22
3 Case study MODUL University Vienna ................................................................ 25
3.1 Introduction of MODUL University Vienna ................................................. 25
3.2 Branding of MODUL University Vienna ....................................................... 27
4 Research Methodology ....................................................................................... 33
4.1 Survey Design and Research Instruments ................................................... 33
5 Results ................................................................................................................. 35
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5.1 Descriptives ................................................................................................. 35
5.1.1 Characteristics of survey participants ................................................. 35
5.1.2 Job Perception of Personnel of MODUL University Vienna ................ 36
5.1.3 MODUL University as an employer ..................................................... 37
5.1.4 Brand Perception of Personnel of MODUL University Vienna ............ 39
5.1.5 Brand awareness of personnel of MODUL University Vienna ............ 40
5.1.6 Brand Commitment of personnel of MODUL University Vienna ........ 42
5.1.7 External branding of MODUL University Vienna ................................. 43
5.1.8 Future development of MODUL University Vienna ............................ 45
5.2 Differences between faculty and staff of the university............................. 45
6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 49
6.1 Discussion of research outcomes................................................................ 49
6.2 Recommendations ...................................................................................... 52
6.3 Limitations and future research .................................................................. 52
7 Appendix ............................................................................................................. 53
7.1 Appendix 1 (Figures) ................................................................................... 53
7.2 Appendix 2 (Survey questions) ................................................................... 56
7.3 Appendix 3 (Interview Summary) ............................................................... 61
8 Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 66
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Age (p. 34)
Figure 2: Position (p. 35)
Figure 3: Durance of Employment (p. 35)
Figure 4: Attractiveness of MODUL University Vienna as an employer (p. 36)
Figure 5: Working at MODUL University Vienna (p. 38)
Figure 6: Branding at MODUL University Vienna (p. 40)
Figure 7: Brand Commitment of Personnel of MODUL University Vienna (p. 41)
Figure 8: External Branding of MODUL University Vienna (p. 43)
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List of Abbreviations
MU-MODUL University Vienna
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1 Introduction
1.1 Background information
Nowadays stiff competition in all kinds of industries exists. Because of that, branding
has become a very important issue that needs to be dealt with in every organization.
Thus, branding currently counts as a necessity for companies to position themselves
on the market among competitors (Sevier, 1994). As a result of that, companies
started to brand their products and services in order to remain their competitive
advantages. Various studies show how an effective branding process leads to higher
customer satisfaction, better competitive positioning and increased profits (Aaker,
Fournier, & Brasel, 2004). Furthermore, branding can be applied internally. Internal
branding within a company helps to promote the company values to its employees
which results in better brand understanding among employees (Ahmed & Rafiq,
2003). In addition to that, it is a creator of brand commitment and brand loyalty
(Papasolomou & Vrontis, 2006).
One of the industries that has recognized the need of branding over the past years is
higher education. As universities are defined as branded institutions (McAlexander,
Schouten, & Koenig, 2005), the use of branding in universities has become a necessity
for marketing a university as a valuable brand to its future students to gain an edge
over their pool of competitors (Joseph, Mullen, & Spark, 2012). Thus, universities try
to communicate their messages and stories to distinguish themselves on the market
and target future students (Judson, Aurand, Gorchels, & Gordon, 2008). Hence, not
only perspective students fear about competition when applying to Universities. In
order to effectively design a university brand, universities have to re-think their
position. It has become of great importance for universities to highlight its distinct
features, which differentiate them from other educational institutions. This is
especially important for “young” universities which are founded after the year of
1992. These universities need to develop strong brands in order to be able to compete
with well known, historic university brands (Rooney, 1995). However, also well-known
university brands need to focus on branding and marketing activities even more to be
able to retain their market share and quality of student intake (Naudé & Ivy, 1999;
Melewar & Akel, 2005).
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A good branding strategy should therefore reflect the capacity to satisfy student’s
needs as well as engender trust in its ability to deliver a certain type and level of higher
education (Bick, Jacobson, & Abratt, 2003). Therefore, external strategies for
promoting the universities brand, such as advertising and sales promotion are being
used (Judson, Aurand, Gorchles, & Gordon, 2008). Although, external promotion
strategies are very important, one must not forget about employees of an
organization. Recently, the workforce of a company has been recognized as crucial to
the organization’s positioning (Judson, Aurand, Gorchles, & Gordon, 2008). Service
literature highlights that branding relies strongly on the performance of employees,
including their actions and attitudes towards customers of an organization. Thus, it is
crucial for an organization to develop great service branding to constantly attract
consumers (de Chernatony & Dall’Olmo Riley, 1997). In particular, in university
setting, the role of employees should not be overseen. It is meaningful that employees
of a university are involved with the brand in general but also to be able to contribute
to the various branding aspects. Various authors demonstrate how the role of
personnel of a university offering high service standards, such as high caliber teachers,
influences how students tend to be attracted towards the university (Gatfield, Barker,
& Graham, 1999; Gutman, & Miaoulis, 2003). However, research still lacks on
understanding how the position of a university, private or public has a different
approach to branding and its outcomes. On top of that, internal branding is hardly
investigated in the higher education sector.
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1.1.1 Research objectives
Based on the preceding discussion this paper aims to investigate the role of internal
branding in the higher education sector. In particular, this paper aims to investigate
and explain the ways in which faculty and staff of MODUL University Vienna is involved
with the universities brand. Thus, the research question of this thesis is:
To which extend is the personnel of MODUL University Vienna is involved into the
university’s brand?
To be able to measure the brand involvement of personnel of MODUL University
Vienna, relevant variables such as “brand identification”, “brand commitment” and
“brand loyalty” which are associated with the topic of brand involvement are being
used as tools for investigation. The first part of the thesis will be directed towards an
introduction and elaboration of the topics relevant literature, explaining what
“branding” and “internal branding” is about in a general context, as well as
furthermore focusing on “branding within a university setting”. Furthermore, the
terms “brand identification”, “brand commitment” and “brand loyalty” will be
explained and discussed. The second part of this paper consists of a case study
featuring the case of MODUL University Vienna. A survey will be distributed amongst
personnel of MODUL University Vienna, to get specific insights on their perceptions
of the brand. The paper furthermore aims to give the board of the university insights
on how well their internal branding strategy is working towards its personnel. The
results of the case study could be a helping tool to showcase to which extent faculty
and staff of the university identify themselves with the brand and give further
implications on the different ways of personnel involvement. Consequently, possible
improvement ideas concerning personnel engagement could be triggered, that the
university could profit from in the long run.
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2 Literature Review
The following section of this paper is directed towards the elaboration of relevant
literature. There is a vast variety of literature concerning the field of branding. Thus,
the following literature review will only deal with the topics perceived most relevant
for this paper. The first paragraph of the main literature used for this thesis, will be
directed towards what “branding” is all about. After that, the terms “internal
branding” and “university branding” will be explained. Furthermore, literature on the
various stakeholders of a university will be discussed. Lastly the literature review will
identify the meaning and co- relation of “brand identification”, “brand commitment”
and “brand loyalty”.
2.1 Main literature
The term “branding” is nowadays used as a universal term in every industry. The
following paragraphs will provide an overview on different approaches and definitions
of the term existing in literature and how “branding” is understood in context of this
particular paper.
2.1.1 Branding
Branding has been used for a long time and is perceived as a universal term. The term
is not only limited to products or services of a company, but is also used in the context
of employees, stakeholders and marketing. Hojberg Christensen (n.d.) states that
there are various suitable definitions of the term branding. He personally defines
branding as
“a continuous communication-, business-, organization process where the
customers differentiate themselves from other competitors based on their
individual core values and stories. “
Ambler and Styles (1996) define branding, as
“the promise of the bundle of attributes that someone buys… these attributes may
be real or illusory, rational or emotional, tangible or invisible” (p.10).
Lastly, Kotler and Keller (2008) refer to branding as
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“an assisting tool which helps to position a product on the market to the right
group of target customers.”
Thus, it can be stated that branding refers to the process of internal and external
communication in organizations, which is linked to not only products or services, but
also to marketing, the employees and stakeholders of an organization. Furthermore,
the right branding can enable organizations to position their product in a favorable
position on the market amongst customers (Aaker et al., 2004).
In literature, there are also different views on the components of branding. Various
authors (i.e., Cherantoni & Dall’Olmo Riley et al., 1998 (as cited in Bennett & Ali
Chaudhury, 2009) refer to a brand only consisting of three components:
(1) a collection of promises to the outside world
(2) a set of distinct features, which define the brands nature and reality
(3) an assortment of aesthetic designations and external communications, as an
external representation of the brand
Hojberg Christensen (n.d), however, assumes that the concept of branding consists of
four different aspects, known as
(1) Strategic branding, which is responsible to answer the value preposition of an
organization, the creation of value for its customers and to work out the main
strategy for the organization.
(2) Marketing branding, which should create strategies how not only the
organization, but also its products can differentiate themselves from competitors
on the market.
(3) Employee branding, which should help employees and management to “live”
the brand and know what the brand is all about.
(4) Stakeholder branding, as the company needs to communicate with its
stakeholders about social parts and the position of the company.
Therefore, one can see that branding consists of various components which are co-
related with each other. A brand consists of certain features and promises which need
13
to be effectively communicated to the customers of an organization with the help of
strategic marketing and employees and also include the stakeholders of an
organization. For this paper, and especially the case study on MODUL University
Vienna, both above mentioned views on components of a brand are applicable. As in
this paper, branding is perceived in the context of a university setting, there are some
specifications on the definition of the term. In a university setting, it is especially
important to brand the organization itself, but also to include other aspects such as
marketing, employees and stakeholders. Thus, branding in university settings is
defined as
“a helping tool to differentiate an educational institution from another to stand
out amongst competitors.”
Because of that, successful branding in university settings needs to be able to reflect
its capacity to satisfy the student’s needs (Bennett & Ali-Choudhury, 2009).
Furthermore, branding for universities shall convey trust in its ability to deliver a
certain type and level of higher education. This will be discussed in more details later.
Furthermore, there is a vast amount of research discussing what makes a brand
successful. Bock, Poole and Joseph (2014) claim, that “a good brand has various side-
effects. First, a good brand delivers a clear value proposition to its customers. Second,
the firms’ credibility is enhanced by a good brand. Third, the brand enables the
consumer to connect in an emotional manner, which subsequently leads to more loyal
consumers and turnover rates.” (p. 19) Kotler and Keller (2008) conclude, that
branding can be seen as successful if the customer perceives the product or service of
a company as the only solution to his “problem”. This leads them to state, that
successful branding requires strategic segmentation, given that segmentation helps
marketers to understand their target markets. Furthermore, Kotler and Keller (2008)
state that segmentation helps to have an effective matching between firms’ products
and consumers’ preferences and needs. Then, Punjaisri and Wilson (2007) refer to the
role of employees as in the success of branding. They believe that employees are the
ones that accomplish to deliver the promise in a suitable manner to the customer. In
this perspective, the topic of internal branding becomes of utmost importance; the
next section of this paper will explain this in more detail.
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2.1.2 Internal Branding
Ahmed and Rafiq (2003), define internal branding as a tool of assistance for an
organization for internally promoting the brand to its employees. This assumption is
being supported by various researchers (i.e., Aurand et al., 2005; Burmann and Zeplin,
2005) who state that internal branding creates understanding of a brand within an
organization. Thus, if the management of an organization communicates the brand
values in an understandable manner to its employees and they understand it
correctly, this will lead to higher brand commitment amongst employees
(Suchjaphong, Nguyen, & Melewar, 2005). On top of that, research also highlights the
importance of internal marketing to foster internal branding. Drake et al. (2005) and
Mitchell (2002) assume that internal branding is created through internal marketing.
Mosley (2007), defines internal marketing as a form of customer-based management,
where on the other hand internal branding is more of a resource based management
form, which intensifies a common-value based culture.
Thus, internal branding, helps companies to promote their brand internally to its
employees. If then, the employees understand the values of the organization; they
will be more committed towards the organization.
In fact, internal branding co- relates with various different brand-related variables. As
such, that internal branding acts as an enabler of success when delivering the brand
promise to meet the brand expectations of customers (Drake et al., 2005). Therefore,
it has become a necessity to dispose of an informed workforce with a strong
commitment to deliver the brand promise to its customers (Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, &
Wilson, 2009). Thus, various big companies such as IBM, Southwest or Ernst and
Young make use of internal branding (i., e, Boone, 2000; Buss, 2012).
Internal branding can be carried out in various ways. One approach of applying
internal branding in organizations, is through creating a visual identity, such as an
organizations name, a specific slogan, logo or symbol, which creates uniqueness
among a brand (Melewar & Akel, 2005). Other than that, Punjaisri and Wilson (2011)
found out, that internal branding in companies is carried out through training and
communication. This includes (daily) briefings, group meetings, notice boards, or
training and orientation. One example for this would be the toiletry company Bath &
Bodyworks’ which conducts branding training workshops to all kinds of its new
15
employees, coaches educate them on their brand’s general concept of branding, their
most important industry competitors as well as on the specific attributes of the brand
that they are promoting externally. In this particular company this is done due to the
fact that every employee of the company should know about the company’s brand
values and attributes to be able to promote the brand to their customers on an
everyday basis. Additionally, internal branding is carried out through physical
measures such as specific dress codes in the form of employee uniforms. At the
clothing company “Abercrombie and Fitch” for example, employees have to wear
clothing of the “Abercrombie brand” in order to act as “brand representatives” and
symbolize enthusiasm and energy for themselves and amongst customers.
Furthermore, wearing similar clothing should promote a feeling of “oneness” among
the employees of the company (Harquail, n.d.).
Thus, there are various ways of how internal branding is carried out amongst
employees in organizations. Companies of all kinds of industries make use of visual-,
emotional-, and physical measures to promote internal branding in their organization.
On top of that, research shows that internal branding also leads to employees’ brand
loyalty. In particular, forms of internal communication and training in the light of
internal branding enhance employees’ brand loyalty (Papasolomou & Vrontis, 2006).
Furthermore, various other authors (i.e., Boone, 2000; de Chernatony & Cottam,
2006; de Chernatony & Segal-Horn, 2001; Hankinson, 2002; Kotter and Heskett, 1992)
agree that internal branding influences employee brand-supporting behavior. This can
be easily explained, because when employees understand the concept and values of
a specific brand, they are committed to the brand, its values and the brand promise
and are able to deliver it to the customers’ expectations. Bergstrom et al. (2002) argue
that internal branding is related to employee brand identification, because it creates
a feeling of “oneness”. This feeling is created through communication of unique brand
values which differentiates the brand from its competitors (De Chernatony, 2001).
Maxwell and Knox (2009) built a more precise model on how this feeling can be
created amongst employees. The authors assume that, through a unique and
attractive employer brand which leads to successful organizational employee
identification towards the organization. If employees can identify themselves with a
brand, it creates organizational citizenship behavior, impression management as well
as distinctive behavior amongst them. Mitchell (2004) and Schultz (2003) furthermore
16
stress, that management cannot force employees to live the brand, they have to want
to do it themselves.
Given the previous discussion, one can state that it is important for managers of
organizations to understand that successful internal branding includes strong internal
communication as well as human resources in forms of training and employee
development programs. As Punjaisri et al. (2009) state, organizations should make use
of internal branding to improve the brand performance of their employees as well as
to enhance the employee’s attitudes towards the organization. Furthermore, internal
branding should be used by managers to foster brand commitment and pride amongst
their employees. (Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson, 2009).
The next section will explain, how branding is applied especially in university settings.
Furthermore, different approaches on the definition of a university brand will be
stated and discussed and the components of a university brand will be elaborated.
2.1.3 University Branding
Generally, one can say, that universities are branded institutions. (McAlexander,
Schouten, & Koenig 2005). Universities are facing a steadily increasing amount of
competition in their environment. Thus, it is important for them to differentiate
themselves on the market and communicate their messages and stories (Judson,
Aurand, Gorchels, & Gordon, 2008). Hence, also in the context of universities branding
started to play an important role.
In fact, university branding plays a major role among all kinds of educational
institutions. Given the diverse kind of universities existing nowadays, branding helps
with differentiation amongst competitors. On the one hand, new universities
(founded after 1992) need to focus on establishing strong brands, to be able to
compete with historic well-known universities (Rooney, 1995). On the other hand, due
to the branding efforts of younger universities, older educational institutions are
forced to increase their branding and marketing activities more than ever to maintain
market share and quality of student intake (Naudé & Ivy, 1999; Melewar & Akel,
2005).
Thus, since the last decades, universities aim to develop valuable customer-oriented
marketing systems as well as to develop a strong university brand (Judson, Aurand,
17
Gorchels, & Gordon, 2008). In this case Frederick, Austin, and Drapper (2002) (as cited
in Judson et al., 2008) define a
“brand in a university setting as “a name, an image, a compelling description of an
organization that captures the essence of the value that your college provides”
(p. 55).
Bick, Jacobson & Abratt (2003) define that a university brand includes the features of
the institution that distinguish it from competitors. They hereby showcase that the
university is able to satisfy student’s needs and is reliable in providing a certain level
of higher education. Universities have realized that an increasing number of
knowledgeable, prospective students choose their university based on their brand
(Judson, Gorchels, & Aurand, 2006). Various authors (i.e., Chernatony & Dall’Olmo
Riley, 1998; Balmer & Soenen, 1999; Pringle & Thompson, 1999; Alessandri, 2001;
Melewar & Jenkins, 2002; Stern, 2006; Bennett & Ali-Choudhury, 2009) state that a
university brand consists of the following components:
(1) a collection of promises presented to the outside world-concerning the
brands benefits (brand as a “covenant”)
(2) a set of distinctive features that define the brand’s inherent nature and
reality (the brand’s quiddity)
(3) an assortment of aesthetic designations and external communications that
describe the brand (the brand’s symbolic and external representation).
According to Bennet and Ali-Choudhury (2009) the most important component of a
university brand are the promises, which include the bundle of attributes the
educational institution offers. This bundle of attributes includes the universities
learning environment, the student’s prospects on graduation, student support
services and social environment. Hence, this shows that the role of personnel
becomes a significant representative element of a university brand. As Judson et al.
(2008) state, students will observe the people inside of a university to get a better
understanding of the quality of intangible elements of the university. As highlighted
by Mitchell (2002), personnel needs to understand its roles and the brand to possible
“live it” to better reach customers.
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The next section of literature is directed towards the various stakeholder segments of
a university brand. Thus, the stakeholder groups of students and staff (including
faculty and employees) in the context of a university brand will be discussed.
2.1.4 The various stakeholders of a university brand
The stakeholders of universities are very broad. The group of stakeholders includes
students and their parents, alumni, faculty and staff, landlords, merchants and sports
fans as well as members of the neighborhoods and surrounding towns. Stakeholders
in university settings create different relationships with each other, but also with the
university itself. Thus, in the light of branding, one needs to understand the role of
the most prominent stakeholders. (McAlexander, Koenig, & Schouten, 2005).
Therefore, the following paragraph focuses on the specific stakeholder groups of
students and staff in university settings, as these groups are seen as most relevant for
this thesis.
2.1.5 Students
The first most important stakeholder group is students. Nowadays, choosing a
university is a difficult task for prospective students. Due to the variety of educational
institutions, it can be perceived as an overwhelming task. In case of choosing a
university, students focus on decision variables such as “image or reputation”,
“location”, “cost” and “availability of a certain academic program” Students tend to
think of the factor “image” as the most important for their choice. (Sevier, 2000). For
example, students are especially attracted to universities that offer great student
support services, high calibre teachers and a student friendly administration (Gatfield,
Barker, & Graham, 1999; Gutman, & Miaoulis, 2003). Other than that, McAlexander,
Koenig and Shouten (2005) demonstrate factors like personal growth, enjoyment and
enrichment are determining whether a student is joining a certain university.
Another aspect of the university setting are the social experiences. In a university
setting, students experience relationships with new people, new surroundings and
new ideas. Sometimes that means moving away from their home town for the first
time, experiencing change and getting to know other lifestyles and beliefs, which can
be described as a stage of transformation in a young adult’s life. Shared experiences,
such as challenges faced together with peers during exam-week or the attendance at
a university football game lead to relationship building among students of a university.
19
Thus, the development of close relationships with other peers and/or faculty of staff
can lead to students’ identification with the university, subsequently leading to
loyalty. This is supported by customer relationship-literature, based on the
assumption that customer-to customer relationships contribute to an organizations
loyalty. Furthermore, there is a relationship between the loyalty of students to an
educational institution and the quality of their “university experience” (McAlexander,
Koenig & Shouten, 2008). Hence, the quality of university experiences shows to be
highly influenced by factors such as social networks and quality of experiences. As
McAxelander et al. (2008) state that also formed students should not be forgotten
when building a university brand. The relationship between alumni and the university
can lead to positive word-of-mouth and support in university promotion.
2.1.6 University’s Personnel
The second stakeholder group discussed in this thesis is university staff. Personnel is
known to be the most important asset of any organization. Generally speaking,
employees of an organization can be seen as internal customers. Thus, when
discussing the topic of branding, the role of firms’ internal customers cannot be
ignored. As a result, firms need to be aware of the fact that brand messages do not
only need to be directed towards customers, but also need to be delivered to the
employees themselves as the internal customers need to be able to associate
themselves with the brand to serve the organization’s standards (Gummesson 1987;
Bowen & Schneider, 1988; George, 1990). Furthermore, firms need the support of
their employees when communicating the brand message as this leads to authenticity
and credibility of the communication. Hence, employees have to match their
performances to the external brand promises (Schiffenbauer 2001; Schultz & Schultz,
2000). As a result, the external brand promise is delivered through the employee’s
performance to the customers (Schultz & Schultz, 2000; Arruda, 2002).
In the light of a university, one can state that the brand of a university is reflected in
its staff and faculty. It seems clear, that personnel of a university is separated into two
main responsibility groups. Firstly “staff”, which mainly supports the non-academic
purposes of the university environment, being for example student support services.
The other main group consists of “faculty” of a university, which provides academic
support as for example teaching amongst the student environment.
The brand image of a university is thus perceived as a rather strong impact on how
20
the personnel of the university carries out their job tasks (Judson, Aurand, Gorchels,
& Gordon, 2008). In fact, the university brand shows to strongly influence how
university staff performs their job, meaning how they use and integrate the brand into
their job tasks on an everyday basis (Judson et al., 2008). In university settings brand
values need to be aligned with employee behavior (Sujchaphong et al., 2015).
To guarantee this, employees of a university need to understand the university brand
clearly. If they do not understand it properly, they might act in a manner which
represents their own values instead of the values of the educational institution
(Jevons, 2006). As a result of that, the university brand becomes unreliable (Stensaker,
2005).
However, there is a slight difference in how strong the brand understanding of
university employees influences their performance. The impact of brand image when
carrying out job tasks is stronger among staff of private universities than in the public
university sector (Judson, Aurand, Gorchels, & Gordon, 2008). In addition to that,
(Judson et al., 2008) found out that the clarity of the brand message of private
university is slightly more distinct than in public educational institutions. Furthermore,
the brand image has a stronger impact on staff management in private universities
compared to public universities. Lastly, the brand understanding of university staff is
stronger in private university settings. (Judson et al., 2008)
Thus, there are some differences when it comes to employee branding in public and
private educational institutions. The concept of brand identification can help to
understand this process better. The next section of this thesis will explain this in more
detail.
2.1.7 Brand Identification
In case of discussing the topic of branding, the topic of brand identification is an
important one. Brand identification is defined as a way external and internal
customers identify themselves with the brand (Hatch & Schultz, 1997; Balmer, 1998).
The specific and enduring features of a firm or university in this case are perceived as
the ‘’organizational identity’’. Thus, the term brand identification is described as a
feeling of belonging to a specific group and as a perception of being linked with the
believes and faith of the group (Mael & Ashforth, 1992, 1995; Tolman, 1943). In this
21
case the group represents the university, the personnel and students belonging to the
brand. As Lawlor (1998) states, brand identity is
“the essence in how one would like his institution to be perceived by alumni,
prospective students, legislators and the public.”
Brand identification of employees can be triggered by internal branding as this creates
a sense of “oneness” among employees. As explained before, internal communication
of unique brand values enhances the brand identification process. This again
highlights the significant role of internal branding to build a successful brand as it
includes internal communication of unique brand values which are specific to a certain
brand (Bergstrom et al.,2002; de Chernatony, 2001). As James et al. (1977) state, if
employees can identify themselves with a brand, they will experience failure or
success concerning their brand.
Such employees furthermore will be proud to be part “of the group”, which has
positive impacts on their behaviour as well as the external image of the brand and
organization Oakes & Turner, 1986 (as cited in Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson,
2009). Some authors (i.e., Legge, 1995; Mowday et al., 1982; Porter et al., 1974 (as
cited in Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson, 2009) refer to the fact that brand
identification and brand loyalty constitute employee commitment. In addition,
research (i.e., Loveman, 1998; Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Silvestro, 2002 (as cited in
Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson, 2009) make a distinction between the two concepts.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that brand identification is a driver of brand commitment
subsequently leading to loyalty too (i.e., Kelman,1958; O’Reilly & Chatman, 1986 (as
cited in Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson, 2009).
The following part of this paper will elaborate on brand commitment.
2.1.8 Brand Commitment
As discussed in the previous section the role of brand commitment is crucial for
enhancing a brand’s success. Burmann and Zeplin (2005) define brand commitment
as
“the extent of psychological attachment of employees to the brand, which
influences their willingness to exert extra effort towards reaching the brand’s
goals” (p.284).
22
In particular, nowadays this topic has become extremely important as we face fierce
competition and demanding consumers, calling for a strong brand commitment from
internal and external stakeholders. Also, here, as Thompson et al. (1999) state,
successful internal communication with employees within a company leads to a better
understanding of the brand and enhanced emotional commitment within a brand.
Furthermore, Aurand et al. (2005) and Burman and Zeplin, (2005), argue that through
internal branding a shared understanding of a brand inside an organization is created,
which fosters brand commitment.
Thus, when employees understand what a brand is all about through the help of
internal branding, Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson (2009), assume that they then are
showing increased brand commitment. Hence, employees will work in a manner
which accepts the brand values. As a result, they will perform in a way that meets the
customers brand expectations. Therefore, internal marketing and internal branding
have effects on employee’s brand commitment (Punjaisri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson,
2009). Consequently, one can see that there is a link between internal branding and
brand commitment. (Burman & Zeplin, 2005). Brand identification has a positive
impact on brand commitment. (Punjaisiri, Evanschitzky, & Wilson, 2009). In case
managers successfully foster employee brand identification, they can expect positive
brand commitment (Punjsaisiri et al., 2009). Mangers need to focus on applying
various methods in order to foster brand identification among their employees. Thus,
if employees are able to identify themselves with the brand they work for, they show
more commitment towards the brand.
The following section of this paper will explain the role of brand loyalty and its links
to other concepts explained before.
2.1.9 Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is very meaningful to the success of an organization, as it safes costs in
the long-run and is a generator of employee satisfaction. From the customer side,
brand loyalty is most commonly used to describe the willingness of customers to
repurchase a good or service. In university settings, this definition is rather not
applicable, as usually students do not “repurchase education” (Berkowitz, Jacoby, &
Chestnut, 1978). As this paper aims to discuss the brand involvement of personnel in
23
a university setting, in this particular case brand loyalty is rather perceived according
to Reicheld’s (1996) assumption that defines brand loyalty as
“the willingness to remain with the present company.”
Loyal employees are found to exhibit a relatively stable and conscious tendency to
engage in a relationship with their employer (Bloemer & Odekerken-Schröder, 2006).
Employee loyalty cuts costs for organizations through a reduced need to recruit and
train new staff, subsequently this leads to more profits (Reichheld, 1996). This applies
to every industry but also to university settings.
Consequently, if personnel of a university is loyal to the brand, meaning the
employees stay longer in their positions, the university has lower costs in recruiting
new employees. Additionally, especially for, for example a position as a professor in a
university, a lot of training and briefing is required for the candidate that enters the
new position which is costly and time consuming. As a result of that, it is clear, that
loyal employees are really important in university settings for being able to keep costs
as low as possible.
Thus, in a university setting, brand loyalty plays a huge role, as educational institutions
face immense competition. On the one hand, brand loyalty can be analyzed from the
external stakeholders (i.e., students), and on the other hand, internal customers (i.e.,
personnel). Thus, brand loyalty is a function of the integration in the brand
community, i.e., of more and stronger relationships binding a person to the
community (McAlexander, Koenig, & Schouten, 2005). Positive inter-customer
relationships contribute to loyalty. Bonds formed between peers and the character of
the university experience can have long term influences on desirable loyalty related
outcomes. (McAlexander, Koenig, & Schouten, 2005). This highlights the need of
universities to invest in social activities, such as student events for their student
community. If bonds or friendships are formed among the student body, students are
more likely to be loyal to their university in the long run.
Moreover, various authors (McAlexander, Koenig, & Schouten, 2005) demonstrate a
co-relation between customer loyalty-behavior and “experiences”, such as made in,
for example, fraternity-sorority systems or student events at universities. Because of
that, it should be taken into consideration for educational institutions to invest in such
“experience-creating activities”, in order to build brand loyalty among its customers
24
which lasts possibly until after graduation. In case of discussing internal customers’
brand loyalty, the use of internal communications and training enhances the
employee’s brand loyalty (Papasolomou & Vrontis, 2006).
Hence, to summarize, one can stated that brand loyalty is very important for all kinds
of organizations and has various meanings from both the customer- and employee
side. Brand loyalty is crucial for cutting costs. In a university setting brand loyalty is
associated to personnel working for the university and the students of the educational
institution. The next chapter will introduce the case study used in the paper to analyze
internal branding in the higher education sector.
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3 Case study MODUL University Vienna
As this paper aims to investigate the topic of brand involvement of faculty and staff of
MODUL University Vienna, the following pages will introduce the University to the
readers, and reflect on the university’s external and internal branding approach.
Furthermore, some background information of MODUL University Vienna will be
given. To get more insights on the (internal) branding situation of the university, both
the Marketing Manager of MODUL University Vienna, Mr. Andreas Eder and the
Generalist of Human Resources, Mr. Robert Vukotic were interviewed. This interview,
gives more detailed information on how the management level of MODUL University
Vienna perceives the importance of branding in a university setting in general, but
also concerning their own institution. Furthermore, they also showcase their
approach to branding and internal branding among faculty and staff.
3.1 Introduction of MODUL University Vienna
MODUL University Vienna, is an international private university located on
Kahlenberg, a spectacular hill in the 19th district of Vienna, Austria. The university was
founded in the year of 2007 and is a part of the MODUL brand which also includes a
vocational tourism and hospitality school in Vienna and exists already for more than
100 years. The MODUL brand is owned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
which is the largest provider of private education in Austria.
MODUL University Vienna offers BBA, BSc, MSc, MBA, and PhD study programs in
various fields, such as tourism and hospitality management, international
management, new media technology, public governance, sustainable development.
At the moment, the university has a study body around 600 students coming from 70
different countries. Following programs are currently offered at MODUL University
Vienna:
Bachelor level:
Bachelor of Business Administration in Tourism and Hospitality Management
Bachelor of Business Administration in Tourism, Hotel Management and Operations
Bachelor of Science in International Management
26
Master Level:
Master of Science in Management
Master of Science in International Tourism Management
Master of Science in Sustainable Development, Management and Policy
PHD Level:
Doctorate of Philosophy in Business and Socioeconomic Sciences
At MODUL University Vienna, all offered programs are taught in English as language
of instruction, additionally there is a guaranteed lecturer to student ratio of 1:20, to
offer optimal student support. The university strives to provide answers to economic,
environmental and social questions, promotes and supports sustainable economic
development and aims to equip students with the ability to value people’s ideas and
creativity. Thus, graduates of MODUL University Vienna should have learned to:
Challenge what we take for granted and embrace change
(Knowledge, Creativity, Innovation)
Support the principles of equality and justice
(Personal Integrity)
Value diversity and humanity
(Mutual Respect)
Serve as ambassadors of sustainable and responsible living
(Responsibility and Stewardship)
The values stated above: Knowledge, Creativity, Innovation, Personal Integrity,
Mutual Respect, Responsibility and Stewardship, are the core values MODUL
University Vienna stands for and are perceived as the university’s key success driving
factors (“History and Values”, n.d., n/a).
These values need to also be respected by the numerous employees of the university.
The educational institution has approximately 65 faculty members and 50 staff
members. The faculty of the university works in the various departments related
directly to the fields of education available at the educational institution. MODUL
University’s main research departments are the department of Applied Statistics and
27
Economics, the department of International Management, the department of New
Media Technology, the department of Tourism and Service Management and the
department of Governance and Sustainable Development. Employees working in
these departments, teach, do research and publish research work. In addition, there
are over a hundred external lecturers working for MODUL University Vienna at the
moment, who teach different courses at the university.
On the other hand, there are around 50 staff members working in the thirteen
different administrative departments of the university being the department of
Accounting, the department of Accounting and Administration, the department of
Admissions and Services, the department of New Media Technology, the department
of Facility Management, the department of Information Systems Services, the Library,
the Managing Director’s Office, the department of MODUL Career, the Reception, the
department of Recruitment and Development Office, the department of Student
Services and the University Communications Office. While some of these
departments, such as for example, the Accounting and Administration department or
the department of Information Systems Services are mostly responsible for
administrative tasks, other departments such as the department of Student Services,
the MODUL Career department or the Library department are additionally more
involved with face-to-face student contact during their daily work operations.
3.2 Branding of MODUL University Vienna
In the following part of this paper, the topic “Branding” and “Internal Branding” in the
case of MODUL University Vienna will be discussed: This includes an interview which
was conducted with the head of Marketing of MODUL University Vienna, Mr. Andreas
Eder, as well as with the Human Resource Generalist of MODUL Universtity, Mr.
Robert Vukotic, who both shared their expert opinions and views on the topics of
branding and internal branding at MODUL University Vienna.
The Human Resource Generalist of MODUL University Vienna perceives branding in
general as very important, but states that it is mostly important for younger
universities, like MODUL University Vienna. He furthermore believes that, a university
brand needs to offer the same strong quality both internally and externally, because
applicants (both students and employees) expect certain standards of the university
as a brand. In addition to that, with the young age of MODUL University Vienna there
28
are challenges involved when attracting faculty and staff to work for the educational
institution. These challenges include that, with the strong branding of historic
universities, some expectations of applicants are automatically attached. Younger
universities such as MODUL University Vienna need to work on building their brand
much more in order to be able to attract applicants. Nevertheless Mr. Vukotic sees an
advantage for MODUL University Vienna being a younger institution. Thus, a younger
institution is able to change in various “directions”. Whereas, very old historic
universities cannot change the image they have built over past decades that easily.
MODUL University Vienna in a certain way inherited the brand of the over a hundred
years existing MODUL brand including the vocational school “Hotel- und
Tourismusschulen MODUL” Vienna. As the university was founded in 2008, a logo
created from an advertising agency already existed, together with a website and the
vision and mission including faculty of the university. However, back then there were
no sorts of any written branding materials available. Thus, what the brand should
represent to the outside, and how it should be promoted to the outside was not
clearly identified during this time. As a result of that, it can be said, that the university
was in a pioneer phase during the first five years of operation, which also led to many
changes concerning programs and directions since then. Since the year 2013 the
university board has decided on a set of lived values, which are re-occurring unique
selling prepositions, and act as marketing missions to promote the university and its
activities on various channels (see previously introduced). In 2015, MODUL University
Vienna published official handbook for MU’s brand guidelines a “Brand and Visual
Identity Guidebook”, which is online on their website (www.modul.ac.at) due to the
re-launch of the university’s brand. This was especially of great importance as MODUL
University started to have campuses around the globe. For example, MODUL
University Dubai was founded. Therefore, it was necessary to professionalize the
university’s branding to train external colleagues of the university to act as kind of the
brand that is lived at MODUL University Vienna.
This guidebook deals with branding related topics such as brand values and brand
strategy of the university, official marketing tagline and the visual identity of the
university. After the first five years of operation, the university identified its “brand
values” which should work as guidelines for student marketing and brand strategy
processes in the long run. These guidelines should be used for promotion purposes
29
for both undergraduate and graduate study programs. There are thirteen “brand
values” identified to be used for promotion activities among potential students:
(1) Strong private ownership with non-profit legal status
(2) MODUL brand history as the oldest vocational training school with a long
tradition in tourism and hospitality education worldwide
(3) MODUL University Vienna hosts the ‘European Center’ for tourism
research
(4) Austria’s leading international private university
(5) Focus on English-taught study programs
(6) International study population of more than 70% international students
(7) Value-based, holistic education concept (based on MODUL University’s
educational values)
(8) Sustainability as key principle of the university’s philosophy
(9) Personalized service and community spirit
(10) Commitment to quality and innovation (AQ Austria and ENQUA
accreditations)
(11) Multidisciplinary research and education with a faculty to student
ratio of 1:20
(12) University exchange programs on most continents and
international career partner companies
(13) Vienna as international student city and mount ‘Kahlenberg’ as
unique study location; secure city with a high standard of living
Furthermore, the “Brand and Visual Identity Guidebook” includes a standardized lead
text which should be used whenever referred to MODUL University Vienna’s main
brand story to the public. Additionally, the document indicates the ways in which the
brand values concerning student marketing should be communicated to successfully
30
strengthen the “MODUL brand” both within and outside of Austria. Also, there are
some “Official Marketing Taglines” described in the guidebook, which should help in
the area of mass communication providing two tagline phrases used both internally
and externally: The first one being “Expanding Horizons” which represents a link to
the university’s vision to broaden minds and the second phrase “Austria’s Leading
International Private University”, which is connected to the university’s development
plan and provides a long-term promise to all of its internal and external stakeholders.
Lastly, the guidebook provides some detailed description on the “Visual Identity” of
the university’s logo. Therefore, there are certain specific guidelines about in which
format the logo can be used on for example print outs or in power point presentations.
These regulations include size, colours, options for the logo in monogram format and
the typography used for official documents (“Brand & Visual Identity Guidebook”,
n.d.).
As Mr. Eder perceives the visual identity of the MODUL brand especially important,
the guidebook includes also certain guidelines related to issues such, on the exact spot
on a document where the logo of the university needs to be printed on, in order to
ensure unity when promoting the brand externally. Mr. Eder furthermore perceives
the usage of pictures as very important for the branding process of MODUL University
Vienna. As he stated, MODUL University Vienna sells an emotional product. Thus, in
his opinion pictures need to be taken and presented in a professional manner. This is
why, every photo used for marketing purposes is taken from a photo stock of
approximately 45 pictures, which was created by a professional photographer. The
main focus of the promotion strategy of MODUL University Vienna has been to
increase the numbers of student, by communicating emotions and the expected
experiences. The main focus is co- related to the young age of the educational
institution. Hence, Mr. Eder would have tackled the issue of branding of the university
differently, if the focus concerning promotion would have been for example to
improve the research output.
Mr. Eder personally thinks that there is a living culture based on pioneers that
attended the university before. Additionally, there are certain types of assemblies and
meetings where the main visions of the university are discussed and transported.
Nevertheless, apart from the labour regulations, there are no official internal
documents (e.g. guidelines) asking the employees to follow certain guidelines
31
concerning branding of the university. Mr. Vukotic additionally confirms that there is
no written document of internal branding regulations existent at the moment.
However, in his opinion, internal branding still exists at MODUL University Vienna, but
not in a written form.
Hence, as seen in the literature review, the more an employee knows about the brand
and the longer the duration of being employed by the university, the higher the
motivation, knowledge and empathy to the organization. Also, Mr. Eder points out
the fact, that there is a difference between the brand awareness of faculty and staff,
as for example a staff member of the cafeteria has a different job description but also
not the same amount of usage of the brand while their work processes. Nevertheless,
both faculty and staff have a very intrinsic motivation to work for MODUL University
Vienna in common. Mr. Eder sees a great challenge in terms of branding in
guaranteeing that every member of faculty and staff of the university has a “voice” in
contributing to the brand, but also to clarify that certain brand related decisions are
made centralized. That is why high brand involvement of faculty and staff brings a lot
of empathy among employees but also challenges. He furthermore thinks that at
MODUL University Vienna, there is a structured culture lived, but faculty and staff
have different duties in this process. Nevertheless, the head of Marketing of the
university would also definitely hand out a brand guidebook not only to faculty but
also to staff in order to make them more familiar to the brand.
There are several nationalities at the university, and therefore cultures come and
work together. Mr. Vukotic would prefer to have some kind of formulated guidelines
available to distribution among employees. Mr. Eder supports the consideration of
implementing some sort of written guidelines of internal branding for employees of
the university. One example for such guidelines would be that Mr. Eder is currently
thinking about creating guidelines on employee behaviour of MODUL University
Vienna concerning social media platforms, because this would be a helping tool to
guarantee a favourable and unified online presence on such channels. From a larger
perspective, such internal branding guidelines would need to include and provide a
basic understanding about the history of the university, how the brand was built over
the first few years of operation, and future directions of the university. Thus, at the
moment, there is no such document, distributed among new employees of MODUL
University Vienna. Nevertheless, currently, there are some informal guidelines of
32
internal branding provided to new employees of the university through their
supervisors. However, as there are no formal guidelines written down in an official
document, every supervisor carries out this responsibility in a different manner. Mr.
Vukotic himself has the impression that he “grew” into the brand while working at the
university. As the university board just recently hired a Human Resource Generalist,
Mr. Eder sees this decision as a very important strategic move concerning the
approach to internal branding. This is due to the fact that in his opinion; the process
of internal branding will be approached now from the Human Resource Generalist
using his expertise in this particular field. In addition to that, from a marketing point
of view Mr. Eder sees that the right understanding of the brand of students, faculty
and staff leads to positive word of mouth, that is why internal branding is crucial for
promoting the university.
In the past, surveys were used as a tool of measuring satisfaction of faculty and staff
of MODUL University Vienna. These surveys did not mainly focus on employee
branding, but more on general satisfaction of faculty and staff of the university or the
job development opportunities at the university. Other than that, no other methods
were used to measure internal branding among faculty and staff of the university
before.
Nevertheless, Mr. Eder and Mr. Vukotic, are very interested on the brand involvement
of faculty and staff of the university. For example, they are eager to know, how the
faculty and staff of MODUL University relate to the quality of education offered at the
university. Various alumni of the university currently work for the university after
graduation. That is why Mr. Eder and Mr. Vukotic assume, that it could be the case
that alumni of the university associate their experience concerning great high quality
education experienced during their studies at MODUL University also with the MODUL
University brand as an employer. Meaning, as they experienced high quality standards
while studying they expect the same values when working for the MODUL University
Vienna brand. Other than that, they are interested in the brand understanding of
employees of the university and would like to get an impression on how good faculty
and staff of MODUL University is aware of the university’s brand values. Thus, it would
interest them as well, how employees of the educational institution see the university
in the future.
33
With the help of a survey distributed among faculty and staff of MODUL University
Vienna, these questions should be answered and analysed further.
4 Research Methodology
The study aims to measure the brand involvement of faculty and staff of MODUL
University Vienna. Therefore, an online survey was created with the help of the online
survey creator www.my.survio.com.” This survey creation tool was used for both
simplicity reasons but also for the sake of time saving and easy handling of the online
creator. As the aim of the conduction of the survey was to measure the extend and
ways personnel of MODUL University Vienna is involved with the university’s brand,
the survey was distributed among all faculty and staff of MODUL University Vienna to
get primary data from the personnel of the university. The survey was answered from
32 participants in total, as 2 surveys were not filled in completely, or invalid a number
of 30 complete surveys could be counted. The survey was distributed via e-mail
through the intranet of MODUL University Vienna to every member of faculty and
staff and was online for a total of 20 days during the time period from 14th of
December 2016 until the 2nd of January 2017.
4.1 Survey Design and Research Instruments
The survey was designed in English language and distributed online through the
intranet of MODUL University Vienna, which made it simple to reach every registered
member of faculty and staff of the university. In the introduction of the online survey
which was created with the help of the online survey creator tool www.my.survio.com
total anonymity and confidentiality was guaranteed to all participants of the survey.
This was especially important due to the rather small number of personnel at MODUL
University Vienna. The survey consisted of a total of fifteen questions. The format of
the questions included open-ended questions, dichotomous questions, semantic
differential questions, likert scale questions and multiple choice questions. In
appendix 3 an overview of the survey can be found.
The very first part of the survey consisted of demographic questions which asked
participants about personal information about themselves, such as age, position at
MODUL University Vienna and length of employment relationship. In the following
section of the survey, participants were asked to rate the job attractiveness, their
34
perception of communication between different departments, the greatness of
career development opportunities, the quality and frequency of employee training
and their likelihood to stay within the company in the upcoming years. Next the survey
asked to answer open ended questions on brand perception, future brand
development and brand value incorporation of the university. Additionally, some
questions dealing with the perception of brand values and brand identification of
MODUL University Vienna were posed. Lastly participants were given the opportunity
to add any further comments. The survey creator tool www.my.survio.com was used
for graphical organization of the gained survey results.
The main variables brand identification, brand involvement and brand loyalty were
measured based on existing scales from literature and adapted to the study setting.
Brand identification based on a scale from Maxwell and Knox (2009) in their study
“Motivating employees to “live the brand”: a comparative case study of employer
brand attractiveness within the firm”, brand involvement on a scale from Judson,
Gorchels, and Aurand (2006) in their study “Building a University Brand from Within:
A Comparison of Coaches’ Perspectives of Internal Branding”, and brand loyalty on a
scale from Judson, Aurand, Gorchels, and Gordon (2008) in their study “Building a
University Brand from Within: University Administrators’ Perspectives of Internal
Branding”.
35
5 Results
The following part of this thesis elaborates and describes the outcomes and results of
the survey conducted, and investigates in their relationships and co-relations between
each other.
5.1 Descriptives
5.1.1 Characteristics of survey participants
The survey conducted for this thesis was able to generate a number of 30 participants.
More than half of the sample of personnel of MODUL University Vienna (17 people;
56.7%) indicated to belong to an age group between 26 and 35 years. The age group
which was chosen second mostly was between the ages of 36 to 45 years old and
consisted of a total number of 11 people (36.7%). There was no participant present in
the sample aged between 18 to 25 years. As for the question of working position of
personnel at MODUL University Vienna, a number of 20 people (66.7 %) stated to be
working within staff positions, whereas 10 people (33.3%) stated to belong to the
faculty of the university.
36
Concerning the question how long participants have been working at MODUL
University Vienna, 13 people of the sample (43.3%) has been working for MODUL
University Vienna for a period of longer than four years. Eleven people (36.7%) of the
sample have been working at the university for two to four years. The group of people
who has been working at the educational institution for less than two years is equally
distributed with each 2 people (6.7%) for each time span category (1 year up to 2
years; 6 months up to 1 year; less than 6 months).
5.1.2 Job Perception of Personnel of MODUL University Vienna
Respondents were asked to rate their perception of their job on a semantic
differential scale. The variables which were positively associated most with how
faculty and staff perceive their job was answered with “interesting” (8 people; 26.7%),
“challenging” (7 people; 23.3%) and “exciting” (7 people; 23.3%). Furthermore 12
survey participants (40%) chose their job to be “rather exciting”, while 9 people (30%)
found their job to be “rather interesting”. Three respondents of the survey (10%)
stated their job to be “rather easy” as well as three people (10%) found their job to
37
be “rather unrewarding”. None of the participants stated their job to be “totally or
very unvaried” or “totally or very uninteresting”.
5.1.3 MODUL University as an employer
Concerning the attractiveness of MODUL University Vienna as an employer, the
“work-life balance” was rated as the most satisfying variable among personnel of
MODUL University Vienna with 17 people (56.7%) rating it to be completely satisfying
and not a single person rating it completely dissatisfying. The second highest rated
variable, “work environment” was rated to be completely satisfying by 13 people
(43.3%) and very satisfying by 14 people (46.7%). The number of employees which
were totally satisfied or dissatisfied with the variable of “employee rewards (salary)
was equal at 4 people (13.3%) for each of the before mentioned levels of satisfaction.
“Style of Management” was ranked to be “rather dissatisfying” by 5 people (16,7%)
which showcases that “Style of Management” is considered to be the most
dissatisfying variable among employees of MODUL University Vienna.
Participants of the survey furthermore had to answer several questions related to the
work-environment at MODUL University Vienna. Thus, 10 (33.3%) employees of the
university rated “communication between the various departments at MODUL
University Vienna” as being rather great, whereas on the other hand 8 (26.7%) people
would rather disagree and 5 (16.7%) people totally disagree on the statement that
“the communication between the various departments within MODUL University
Vienna is great”. 7 respondents, rated to be “neutral” towards this statement.
None of the faculty and staff of MODUL University Vienna totally agreed on the
statement that MODUL University Vienna offers great career development
38
opportunities to its employees, nevertheless one third of respondents (10 people;
33.3%) rather agreed on the statement, and another third of the survey participants
(10 people; 33.3%) feel neutral concerning this statement. Six respondents (20%)
rather disagreed, and 4 respondents (13.3) completely disagreed on the statement
that MODUL University Vienna offers great career development opportunities to its
employees.
Nine (30%) survey respondents rather agreed on the statement that employees of
MODUL University Vienna receive relevant job training on a regular basis at the
beginning of their career, whereas 11 (36.7%) survey participants answered to think
“neutral” concerning this topic. Furthermore 4 (13.3%) employees of the university
totally disagreed on having received relevant job training on a regular basis at MODUL
University at the beginning of their career. Furthermore, 5 (16.7%) respondents rather
disagreed on receiving relevant job training on a regular basis at MODUL University
Vienna at the beginning of their career. However, when asked, if employees would
agree concerning receiving relevant job training on a regular basis during their career,
10 (33.3%) respondents rather disagreed on this statement. Six (20%) employees of
MODUL University Vienna rather agreed to receive relevant job training on a regular
basis during their career.
When asked if faculty and staff would see themselves working at MODUL University
Vienna for the next two coming years, half of the respondents (15 people, 50%)
indicated total willingness to stay within the organization, additionally 4 (13.3%)
people rather agreed that they desire to stay with MODUL University Vienna as their
employer for the next two coming years. Only 1 (3.3%) respondent indicated the
definite preference to leave MODUL University Vienna as an employer in the next two
following years and another single respondent (3.3%) would rather not consider
staying within the company in the next two coming years.
39
5.1.4 Brand Perception of Personnel of MODUL University Vienna
In an open ended question the survey contained, participants had to briefly describe
what the brand of MODUL University Vienna represents and stands for according to
their personal opinion. Most of the respondents described MODUL University Vienna
as an international, research based business school with a focus on Hotel and Tourism
Management. Several answers included furthermore, that MODUL University Vienna
stands for a high level of excellent education. The majority of survey respondents
additionally mentioned that the “MODUL brand” stands for sustainability, innovation
and diversity as key values of the educational institution. Moreover, MODUL
University Vienna was described as representing great tradition inherited from the
MODUL tourism school from several survey participants. Various participants
additionally highlighted the familiar feel and community spirit the university
represents, as well as small class sizes, personal interaction between stakeholders of
the university and the beautiful environment at ‘Kahlenberg’ hill.
In another question respondents of the survey were asked to choose the brand values
of MODUL University Vienna, they personally find most appealing. The brand value,
which was perceived as most appealing to personnel of the educational institution
was “International study population of more than 70% international students”, which
was chosen by 22 (73.3%) respondents. The second most chosen brand value was
“Personalized service and community spirit”, which was chosen by half of the
respondents (15 people; 50%), followed by “Sustainability as key principle of the
university’s philosophy”, “Value-based, holistic education concept (based on MODUL
40
University’s educational values)” and “Multidisciplinary research and education with
a faculty to student ratio of 1:20” all each rated by 11 people (36.7%).
The least popular brand values among personnel of MODUL University Vienna were
“Strong private ownership with non-profit legal status” with only one vote (3.3%) as
well as “University exchange programs on most continents and international career
partner companies” and “MODUL brand history as the oldest vocational training
school with a long tradition in tourism and hospitality education worldwide” which
only reached 3 (10%) votes for each brand value.
5.1.5 Brand awareness of personnel of MODUL University Vienna
The next question of the survey conducted dealt with the brand awareness of
personnel of MODUL University Vienna. Seven (23.3%) employees of MODUL
University indicated to be totally familiar with the brand guidelines of MODUL
University Vienna, also 17 (56.7%) respondents chose to be rather familiar with the
brand guidelines of the university. Only 3 (10%) survey participants rather disagreed
on being familiar with the brand guidelines of MODUL University Vienna and none of
the respondents completely disagreed on being familiar with the brand guidelines of
the educational institution.
As Figure 6 shows, five (16.7%) employees of MODUL University Vienna totally agreed
on the statement that they have been intensively introduced to the brand guidelines
of the university, additional 12 (40%) employees rather agreed as well on this
statement. On the other hand 6 (20%) respondents of the survey rather disagreed and
3 (10%) respondents completely disagreed concerning the question if they have been
introduced intensively to the brand guidelines of MODUL University Vienna.
Consequently 11 (36.7%) respondents would rather prefer to receive more
information on the brand guidelines of MODUL University Vienna, 10 (33.3%) survey
participants indicated to have no clear opinion towards this issue, whereas 7 (23.3%)
employees would rather not like to receive more information on the university’s
brand guidelines and only 2 (6.7%) respondents stated their preference of not desiring
to get more information on the brand guidelines of MODUL University Vienna at all.
41
Survey participants also had to give some recommendations on how they would
improve the internal branding activities at MODUL University Vienna in an open-
ended question. The majority of survey respondents indicated that to improve the
internal branding activities at MODUL University Vienna, more employee,
management and staff meetings need to be held which would lead to more internal
communication and would also trigger valuable discussions on the topic of branding
among personnel of the university. Furthermore, various employees of the university
would recommend yearly satisfaction questionnaires and meetings with a following
discussion meeting to enhance both communication and satisfaction of personnel.
Especially for new employees, faculty and staff who participated in the survey, found
it important to offer brand introduction sessions or workshops and additional training.
The new employees should be introduced to the brand values and guidelines by for
example a senior member of management or a member of the department of Human
Resources of the university in form of a briefing, at the beginning of their job.
Also, brand information packages were mentioned by survey participants, which could
be handed out to new employees. Furthermore, various respondents stated that
faculty and staff need to work closer together, as there is currently a “gap” between
non-academic staff, academic staff and faculty. Therefore, the survey participants
recommended that, (especially new) employees need to be introduced to all
departments intensively, as that would strengthen the team spirit within the
university. In addition to that, respondents recommended, that MODUL University
Vienna should offer support to its faculty and staff on how to incorporate the
university’s brand guidelines and core values into their daily work processes. Thus,
there should be training available to lecturers on how to incorporate brand guidelines
and key values of MODUL University Vienna into their teaching. As suggested by a
42
survey respondent, a professor could then for example get further training on
innovative teaching methods for his or her particular class.
5.1.6 Brand Commitment of personnel of MODUL University Vienna
Another question of the survey was directed towards brand commitment of personnel
at MODUL University Vienna; see Figure 7 for an overview. Seventeen (56.7%) survey
respondents completely agreed to feel that they are personally contributing to the
success of the “MODUL brand”. Furthermore 10 (33.3%) participants rather agreed to
feel that their personal contribution leads to success of the university’s brand. There
was no respondent who rather disagreed or disagreed completely concerning this
topic. Twenty (66.7%) survey respondents agreed completely to feel responsibility to
carry out their job in a manner that represents the brand values of the “MODUL
brand”. Additional 8 (26.7%) survey participants indicated to rather agree on this
statement. There were no respondents who rather disagreed or disagreed completely
on feeling personally responsible to carry out their job in a manner that represents
the brand values of the “MODUL brand”.
Twelve employees of MODUL University Vienna stated to agree completely and 13
employees indicated to rather agree when asked if they do try to incorporate the
brand values of MODUL University Vienna into their daily work processes. None of the
respondents chose to rather disagree or disagree completely on this statement.
Faculty and staff were furthermore asked to give examples on how they personally
incorporate the brand values of MODUL University Vienna into their daily work
processes. Most survey respondents mentioned that, engaging in the “MODUL
community” plays a huge role for them, when incorporating the brand values of
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MODUL University Vienna into their work processes on a daily basis. Thus, they
indicated the importance of making the students of the university feel welcome and
appreciated while trying to interact as much as possible with them. Additionally,
various survey participants stated that they try to support the community spirit of the
university by appreciating the diverse cultural backgrounds of students and by
motivating students to take part in student events and activities, while taking part in
these events and activities themselves. Moreover, faculty and staff of MODUL
University who took part in the survey mentioned, that the key value of sustainability
plays a huge role when incorporating the brand values of MODUL University into their
daily work processes. Personnel of MODUL University Vienna indicated to working
with care about the environment and also social surrounding, but also a focus on a
sustainable future. As examples for that, respondents mentioned working in a manner
that uses the least amount of resources such as for example trying to avoid
unnecessary prints, reusing print outs for taking notes or using a refillable water bottle
instead of a water bottle made of plastic or turning off the lights when leaving the
class room. Respondents of the survey additionally stated keeping English as language
of communication among all stakeholders of the university as a very important aspect
of incorporating brand values of MODUL University in their daily work processes. They
indicated that, speaking in English language helps to eliminate language barriers and
supports the aspect of internationalization of the university. Also, the majority of
survey respondents mentioned that they are putting effort in the ways they conduct
research when trying to incorporate the brand values of MODUL University into their
daily work processes. They do this, by actively going to research seminars and
choosing recent topics for their research projects that fit within the brand values of
the university.
5.1.7 External branding of MODUL University Vienna
Next in the survey, a question on external brand representation was asked. As figure
8 shows, six (20%) survey respondents agreed totally on, what the “MODUL brand”
represents to its external stakeholders in terms of marketing is true to reality.
Fourteen (46.7%) survey participants rather agreed on this statement. Contrary, 5
(16.7%) respondents partly disagreed on the statement, that what the “MODUL
brand” represents to its external stakeholders in terms of marketing is true to reality.
None of the respondents disagreed completely on this statement.
44
Seventeen (56.7%) respondents strongly perceive that the products and services
offered to students of MODUL University Vienna are of high value and quality. Ten
(33.3%) respondents indicate to rather perceive that the products and services
offered at MODUL University Vienna are of great value and quality. Three (10%)
respondents feel neutral towards the subject whereas none of the respondents
perceives the quality and values of products offered at the educational institution
negatively at all.
Nearly half of the survey respondents (14 people, 46.7%) agree completely on the
“MODUL brand” being strongly competing on the private education market on a
national level. Eleven (36.7%) people in addition rather agree on this issue. Only one
(3.3%) respondent rather disagreed on the “MODUL brand” being strongly competing
on the private higher education market on a national level and none of the
respondents disagreed completely. On the other hand, when being asked whether the
“MODUL brand” is strongly competing on the private higher education market on an
international level, respondents had slightly different views. The number of
respondents who indicated to agree completely on the “MODUL brand” being
strongly competing on the private education market on an international level
decreased to a lower number as for the national market with only 8 (26.7%)
respondents who agreed completely on the statement. One (3.3%) respondent rather
disagreed and one (3.3%) respondent disagreed completely concerning the “MODUL
brand” having a competitive position on the private higher education market on an
international level.
45
5.1.8 Future development of MODUL University Vienna
Lastly survey participants were able to state in an open-ended question, how they see
MODUL University Vienna develop as a brand in the next 10 coming years. Generally,
most of the respondents indicated that MODUL University will become Austria’s
leading private university while expanding on an international level and opening more
branch universities worldwide. Additionally, they believe that the university’s network
of partners will increase and that the overall awareness and reputation of the
“MODUL brand” will be better on a national and international level. Respondents
assume that the level of reputation will depend on the performance of graduates in
their jobs. Many respondents furthermore expect MODUL University Vienna to
increase in terms of student number and offered study programs. As they think, that
the “MODUL brand” currently stands mostly for education in tourism and hospitality,
they assume that in the future, MODUL University Vienna will also be known for its
business-related programs. Thus, some of the participants believe, that the change of
ownership of the university will decide whether the university will transform into a
business school going away from its current focus on being a university focused mainly
on tourism and hospitality.
5.2 Differences between faculty and staff of the university
As the survey conducted was filled in by both faculty and staff of MODUL University
Vienna, the following paragraph is dedicated to showcase differences between these
two groups of personnel of MODUL University Vienna.
Staff of the university participating in the survey indicated to be aged between 26 and
35 years (40%) and between 36 to 45 years of age (60%). None of the staff stated to
be older than 45 years of age. On the other hand, 20% of faculty of MU indicated to
be older than 45 years of age. Furthermore 10% of staff members stated to be working
at MODUL University Vienna for a duration of less than 6 months or a duration
between 6 months up to one year. In contrast, only 10% of faculty members of the
university indicated to be working at MODUL University Vienna for a time period
between one to two years, whereas 50% of faculty has been working for the university
for more than 4 years.
Concerning the job perception, only 10 percent of staff stated to completely agree
when asked if they found their job to be challenging, on the other hand 50% of faculty
46
of the university perceived their job as very challenging, and 40% as rather
challenging. In addition, only 5% of the staff members of MODUL University Vienna
found their job to be very rewarding, whereas 40% of MU’s faculty indicated that their
job to be very rewarding. 50% of faculty perceives their job as very exciting. On the
other hand, none of the asked staff members rated their job as very exciting. Only 15
% of staff perceived their job as rather exciting. In addition, 40% of faculty of the
university perceives their job to be very varied, whereas none of the staff members
did perceive their job to be very varied, and 60% of the staff of MU perceived their
job to be rather varied. Moreover 50% of faculty believes their job to be very
interesting, but only 3% of staff feels that their job is very interesting.
Concerning employee rewards, 70% of faculty indicated to be rather satisfied with
their salary, but only 35% of staff of MODUL University stated to be satisfied with their
salary. Fifty percent of the staff members are rather satisfied with the style of
management of the university, whereas only 30% of faculty is rather satisfied with the
management style carried out at MU. Only 20% of faculty found the work
environment at the university very great, whereas 55% of staff perceived the work
environment as very great. Moreover, 65% of staff of the university indicated that
they perceive the work-life balance as very great, while only 40% of faculty perceived
the work-life balance to be very great
When asked if they perceive the communication between the various departments at
MODUL University Vienna as great, 20% of faculty disagreed completely and 50% felt
neutral concerning this question. Additionally, 40% of staff rather disagreed to the
communication being great. While 40% of faculty believes that there are rather great
career development options at MODUL University Vienna, 20% believe that the career
development options at the university are really bad. 15% staff of the university
strongly disagreed on receiving relevant job training at the beginning or during their
job. On the other hand, 30% of faculty indicated to rather agree on receiving relevant
job training at the beginning of their job, and 40% indicated to rather having received
relevant job training during their job. Both half of members of faculty and staff
indicated the willingness to stay within their jobs for the next two coming years.
When asked to rate the 4 most important brand values of the university, staff of MU
choose “International study population of more than 70% international students “ as
most important value (80%), followed by “Personalized service and community spirit”,
47
chosen by 60% of staff members, “Vienna as international student city and mount
‘Kahlenberg’ as unique study location; secure city with a high standard of living” (45%)
and “Focus on English-taught study programs” which was perceived as important
value by 40% of staff members. Only 5% of staff chose “Strong private ownership with
non-profit legal status”, which made this value the least popular.
On the other hand, faculty rated “Value-based, holistic education concept (based on
MODUL University’s educational values)” as most appealing value (80%), followed by
“International study population of more than 70% international students” (60%),
“Multidisciplinary research and education with a faculty to student ratio of 1:20”
(50%), and “Sustainability as key principle of the university’s philosophy” (40%). None
of the faculty members rated “University exchange programs on most continents and
international career partner companies” as appealing.
When asked if respondents are very familiar with the brand guidelines of MODUL
University Vienna, 65% of staff indicated to be very familiar with the brand guidelines
of MU whereas only 10% of faculty members, believe to be very familiar with the
brand guidelines of the university. Furthermore, 75% of staff completely agreed to
having been introduced to the brand of MODUL University Vienna intensively, but
only 10% of faculty completely agreed to having been introduced to the brand of
MODUL University intensively. Thus, only 30% of staff would rather prefer to receive
more information on the brand guidelines of MODUL University Vienna, nevertheless
60% of faculty would rather prefer to receive more information on the brand
guidelines of the university.
65% of staff strongly believes to be contributing to the success of the university, and
40% of faculty of MODUL University Vienna, strongly believes to be contributing the
university’s success. Furthermore, 75% of staff and 50% of faculty, indicated to
completely agreed on feeling responsible to carry out their job in a manner that
represents the brand values of the “MODUL brand”. Additionally, 50% of staff
completely agreed on trying to incorporate the brand values of MODUL University
Vienna into their daily work processes, while only 20% of faculty indicated to
completely agree concerning this matter.
65% of staff rather believes that what the “MODUL brand” represents to its external
stakeholders in terms of marketing is true to reality, on the other hand, 40% of faculty
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of the university rather disagrees on the statement that what the “MODUL brand”
represents to its external stakeholders in terms of marketing, is true to reality.
Additionally, 55% of staff, and 60% of faculty, believes that products and services
offered to students of MODUL University Vienna are very great.
When asked if MODUL University Vienna, is competing strongly on the private higher
sector on the national market, 50% of the staff members of MU completely agreed
and 40% of faculty completely agreed on the university being strongly competitive on
the national market. When asked whether the university is competitive on the private
education sector on the international market, 25% of staff completely agreed and 30%
of faculty completely agreed on this question.
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6 Conclusion
The following section of the thesis is directed towards discussing the results of the
research outcomes and elaborating on the co-relations between the findings.
6.1 Discussion of research outcomes
The main goal of this thesis aimed to understand in which ways faculty and staff of
MODUL University Vienna is involved with the university’s brand. In literature brand
identification, brand commitment and brand loyalty are associated with the topic of
branding and where used as variables for measuring the brand involvement of
personnel of MODUL University Vienna in this thesis.
At first, looking at the big picture both faculty and staff of MODUL University Vienna,
seem to be involved with the brand of the university. However, it is important to look
at the previously mentioned variables in detail to find out about their brand
involvement and the ways of this involvement more precisely.
The brand identification of personnel of MODUL University Vienna was measured with
various questions in the survey conducted for the case study of MODUL University
Vienna. If personnel is generally satisfied with their job, they tend to be able to
identify themselves more with a certain brand. Personnel of MODUL University
Vienna, rated their job rather positively, but there were various differences on the job
perception between faculty and staff of the university. Thus, faculty of the university
generally felt their job to be more “challenging”, “rewarding”, “exciting”, “varied”,
and “interesting” than the staff of the university. This could be the case as faculty of
the university has more direct contact with students of the university and their job
tasks could be considered less repetitive than job tasks of personnel working in staff
positions. In addition, faculty and staff of MU showed to be standing behind the
quality and value of education offered to students of the university. These results
show that, employees of the university can identify themselves with the brand of
MODUL University Vienna not only concerning their job and working environment,
but also with the products the university is offering to its students.
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Furthermore, employees of organizations need to be committed towards the
organization, in order to be involved with the brand of the company. Employees tend
to show more commitment towards a brand, if they know what it stands for and
represents. Personnel of MODUL University especially finds that the international
student body of the university and the personalized service and community spirit of
the university are very appealing among the brand values of the educational
institution. Most of the faculty and staff also described the university as a brand in a
rather similar manner mentioning it being an international, research based university,
while focusing on excellent education in the field of Tourism and Hospitality and
standing for innovation and sustainability. Although generally faculty and staff
indicated to be aware of the brand guidelines of the university, both faculty and staff
stated that they haven’t been introduced to the brand of MODUL University Vienna
intensively. Especially faculty of the university wishes for additional information on
the branding guidelines of MODUL University Vienna.
It is important for employees of an organization to feel that they and their actions
“matter” within a company to trigger brand commitment (Tyler & Blader, 2000). The
majority of personnel of MODUL University Vienna believes that with carrying out
their job, they contribute to the university’s success. Thus, they aim to carry out their
job in a manner that represents the brand values of the “MODUL brand”. Although,
this is already really valuable for the educational institution, managers of the
university should support personnel more when it comes to incorporating the brand
values of the university into their daily work processes. Many employees already try
to do so, by for example, focusing on sustainable use of resources or respecting
cultural differences. However, various participants indicated that there needs to be
support on how to incorporate the brand values of the university in the most efficient
manner.
As seen in literature, brand commitment is created through effective communication
(Thompson et al., 1999). Personnel of MODUL University Vienna, rated the
communication between the various departments of the university as rather bad.
Thus, actions need to be taken to enhance the communication between colleagues of
the university. As some participants mentioned that there is currently a “gap”
between faculty and staff departments of the university, it is of great importance to
take actions to bridge this gap, with for example increasing the number of employee
51
meetings, introducing new employees intensively to each other or organizing team
building events for both faculty and staff.
Although personnel of the university is rather aware of the key values of the
university, they would generally wish for better communication between
departments which could enhance commitment, especially in bringing faculty and
staff together.
Brand loyalty in organizations, can be achieved, if employees are feeling comfortable
in the working environment and feel that their job offers career development
opportunities which leads them to stay in their position longer (Reichheld, 1996). In
this study, personnel of MODUL University Vienna generally feels rather satisfied with
their environment of their job at the university. The employees indicated that they
are rather satisfied with the working conditions of MODUL University Vienna,
including their salary, the style of management of the university, the working
environment, and the work-life balance of their job. There were slight differences
between the ratings of faculty and staff. Especially concerning “salary”. Faculty of the
university rated salary to be really great, whereas staff did not perceive the salary to
be as great.
Career development opportunities are also associated with playing a very important
role when it comes to motivating employees towards being loyal to a company’s
brand (Reichheld, 1996). At MODUL University Vienna, career development
opportunities are not perceived as being very great, however faculty of the university
perceives career development opportunities as slightly better than staff members.
Participants additionally indicated the lack of relevant job training carried out on a
regular basis at the beginning and during the job of personnel of the university.
The lack of these career development opportunities could lead to an increase in
turnover in the long run, as employees could feel to leave the company, if they see no
potential for further promotions or career directions (Lam, Zhang, & Baum, 2001).
Thus, only both half of faculty and staff indicated to planning to be staying with
MODUL University as an employer in the next two coming years. In order to enhance
the loyalty of personnel of MODUL University Vienna, actions need to be taken to
point out career development opportunities in a more attractive and efficient manner
among faculty and staff of the university.
52
To conclude, one can say, that both faculty and staff are involved with the brand of
MODUL University Vienna, but this involvement needs to be strengthened and
developed further. Especially communication and training need to be enhanced and
the existing “gap” between faculty and staff departments needs to be bridged by
taking various actions.
6.2 Recommendations
As discussed in the previous part of this thesis, various actions need to be taken in
order to enhance the brand involvement of personnel of MODUL University Vienna
further. As a result of that, communication needs to be supported throughout the
various departments of the university. This could be carried out, by holding regular
employee meetings as well as conducting employee surveys and following
discussions. Additionally, career development opportunities need to be designed in a
more obvious and attractive manner, to keep the turnover rate among employees as
low as possible. Although employees are rather informed about the university’s brand
values and guidelines especially, faculty wishes to get more information about the
brand of the university. Thus, a written document on branding guidelines of the
university for “existing” employees could be beneficial. Numerous survey participants
furthermore pointed out the need for “brand introduction sessions” or “brand
guidelines handbooks” which could be offered to new employees in order to help
them to get familiar with the brand. Furthermore, regular brand workshops could be
held to constantly trigger discussions concerning what the brand stands for among
the colleagues of the university.
6.3 Limitations and future research
One limitation of the study would be the amount of participants which was achieved.
Only approximately 50% of personnel of the university participated in the survey.
Additionally, participants could have answered the questions in a biased way, as they
could have felt a responsibility towards the university to answer the questions in a
manner that represents the university in a favorable way.
As at the moment, there is a lot of research on branding in general and in various
industries, there needs to be more research on branding in university settings.
University need to be seen as branded institutions in order to achieve this. As research
on stakeholders of universities (especially on students) already exists, there needs to
53
be research on faculty and staff as stakeholders of an educational institution in
particular as well. Universities themselves need to investigate in the position of their
personnel concerning branding, to be able to take actions to enhance the overall
positioning of their brand.
7 Appendix
7.1 Appendix 1 (Figures)
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55
56
7.2 Appendix 2 (Survey questions)
57
58
59
60
61
7.3 Appendix 3 (Interview Summary)
The Human Resource Generalist of MODUL University Vienna perceives branding in
general as very important, but states that it is mostly important for younger
universities, like MODUL University Vienna. He furthermore believes that, a university
brand needs to offer the same strong quality both internally and externally, because
applicants (both students and employees) expect certain standards of the university
as a brand. In addition to that, with the young age of MODUL University Vienna there
are challenges involved when attracting faculty and staff to work for the educational
institution. These challenges include that, with the strong branding of historic
universities, some expectations of applicants are automatically attached. Younger
universities such as MODUL University Vienna need to work on building their brand
much more in order to be able to attract applicants. Nevertheless Mr. Vukotic sees an
advantage for MODUL University being a younger institution. Thus, a younger
institution is able to change in various “directions”. Whereas, very old historic
universities cannot change the image they have built over past decades that easily.
MODUL University in a certain way inherited the brand of the over a hundred years
existing MODUL brand including the vocational school “Hotel- und Tourismusschulen
MODUL” Vienna. As the university was founded in 2008, a logo created from an
advertising agency already existed, together with a website and the vision and mission
including faculty of the university. However, back then there were no sorts of any
written branding materials available. Thus, what the brand should represent to the
outside, and how it should be promoted to the outside was not clearly identified
during this time. As a result of that, it can be said, that the university was in a pioneer
phase during the first five years of operation, which also led to many changes
concerning programs and directions since then. Since the year 2013 the university
board has decided on a set of lived values, which are re-occurring unique selling
prepositions, and act as marketing missions to promote the university and its activities
on various channels. In 2015, MODUL University Vienna published official handbook
for MU’s brand guidelines a “Brand and Visual Identity Guidebook”, which is online on
their website (www.modul.ac.at) due to the re-launch of the university’s brand. This
was especially of great importance as MODUL University started to have campuses
around the globe. For example, MODUL University Dubai was founded. Therefore, it
62
was necessary to professionalize the university’s branding to train external colleagues
of the university to act as kind of the brand that is lived at MODUL University Vienna.
This guidebook deals with branding related topics such as brand values and brand
strategy of the university, official marketing tagline and the visual identity of the
university. After the first five years of operation, the university identified its “brand
values” which should work as guidelines for student marketing and brand strategy
processes in the long run. These guidelines should be used for promotion purposes
for both undergraduate and graduate study programs. There are thirteen “brand
values” identified to be used for promotion activities among potential students:
Furthermore, the “Brand and Visual Identity Guidebook” includes a standardized lead
text which should be used whenever referred to MODUL University’s main brand story
to the public. Additionally, the document indicates the ways in which the brand values
concerning student marketing should be communicated to successfully strengthen
the “MODUL brand” both within and outside of Austria. Also, there are some “Official
Marketing Taglines” described in the guidebook, which should help in the area of mass
communication providing two tagline phrases used both internally and externally: The
first one being “Expanding Horizons” which represents a link to the university’s vision
to broaden minds and the second phrase “Austria’s Leading International Private
University”, which is connected to the university’s development plan and provides a
long-term promise to all of its internal and external stakeholders. Lastly, the
guidebook provides some detailed description on the “Visual Identity” of the
university’s logo. Therefore, there are certain specific guidelines about in which
format the logo can be used on for example print outs or in power point presentations.
These regulations include size, colors, options for the logo in monogram format and
the typography used for official documents
As Mr. Eder perceives the visual identity of the MODUL brand especially important,
the guidebook includes also certain guidelines related to issues such, on the exact spot
on a document where the logo of the university needs to be printed on, in order to
ensure unity when promoting the brand externally. Mr. Eder furthermore perceives
the usage of pictures as very important for the branding process of MODUL University
Vienna. As he stated, MODUL University Vienna sells an emotional product. Thus, in
his opinion pictures need to be taken and presented in a professional manner. This is
why, every photo used for marketing purposes is taken from a photo stock of
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approximately 45 pictures, which was created by a professional photographer. The
main focus of the promotion strategy of MODUL University Vienna has been to
increase the numbers of student, by communicating emotions and the expected
experiences. The main focus is co- related to the young age of the educational
institution. Hence, Mr. Eder would have tackled the issue of branding of the university
differently, if the focus concerning promotion would have been for example to
improve the research output.
Mr. Eder personally thinks that there is a living culture based on pioneers that
attended the university before. Additionally, there are certain types of assemblies and
meetings where the main visions of the university are discussed and transported.
Nevertheless, apart from the labor regulations, there are no official internal
documents (e.g. guidelines) asking the employees to follow certain guidelines
concerning branding of the university. Mr. Vukotic additionally confirms that there is
no written document of internal branding regulations existent at the moment.
However, in his opinion, internal branding still exists at MODUL University Vienna, but
not in a written form.
Also, Mr. Eder points out the fact, that there is a difference between the brand
awareness of faculty and staff, as for example a staff member of the cafeteria has a
different job description but also not the same amount of usage of the brand while
their work processes. Nevertheless, both faculty and staff have a very intrinsic
motivation to work for MODUL University Vienna in common. Mr. Eder sees a great
challenge in terms of branding in guaranteeing that every member of faculty and staff
of the university has a “voice” in contributing to the brand, but also to clarify that
certain brand related decisions are made centralized. That is why high brand
involvement of faculty and staff brings a lot of empathy among employees but also
challenges. He furthermore thinks that at MODUL University Vienna, there is a
structured culture lived, but faculty and staff have different duties in this process.
Nevertheless, the head of Marketing of the university would also definitely hand out
a brand guidebook not only to faculty but also to staff in order to make them more
familiar to the brand.
There are several nationalities at the university, and therefore cultures come and
work together. Mr. Vukotic would prefer to have some kind of formulated guidelines
available to distribution among employees. Mr. Eder supports the consideration of
64
implementing some sort of written guidelines of internal branding for employees of
the university. One example for such guidelines would be that Mr. Eder is currently
thinking about creating guidelines on employee behavior of MODUL University Vienna
concerning social media platforms, because this would be a helping tool to guarantee
a favorable and unified online presence on such channels. From a larger perspective,
such internal branding guidelines would need to include and provide a basic
understanding about the history of the university, how the brand was built over the
first few years of operation, and future directions of the university. Thus, at the
moment, there is no such document, distributed among new employees of MODUL
University Vienna. Nevertheless, currently, there are some informal guidelines of
internal branding provided to new employees of the university through their
supervisors. However, as there are no formal guidelines written down in an official
document, every supervisor carries out this responsibility in a different manner.
Mr. Vukotic himself has the impression that he “grew” into the brand while working
at the university. As the university board just recently hired a Human Resource
Generalist, Mr. Eder sees this decision as a very important strategic move concerning
the approach to internal branding. This is due to the fact that in his opinion; the
process of internal branding will be approached now from the Human Resource
Generalist using his expertise in this particular field. In addition to that, from a
marketing point of view Mr. Eder sees that the right understanding of the brand of
students, faculty and staff leads to positive word of mouth, that is why internal
branding is crucial for promoting the university.
In the past, surveys were used as a tool of measuring satisfaction of faculty and staff
of MODUL University Vienna. These surveys did not mainly focus on employee
branding, but more on general satisfaction of faculty and staff of the university or the
job development opportunities at the university. Other than that, no other methods
were used to measure internal branding among faculty and staff of the university
before.
Nevertheless, Mr. Eder and Mr. Vukotic, are very interested on the brand involvement
of faculty and staff of the university. For example, they are eager to know, how the
faculty and staff of MODUL University relate to the quality of education offered at the
university. Various alumni of the university currently work for the university after
graduation. That is why Mr. Eder and Mr. Vukotic assume, that it could be the case
65
that alumni of the university associate their experience concerning great high quality
education experienced during their studies at MODUL University also with the MODUL
University brand as an employer. Meaning, as they experienced high quality standards
while studying they expect the same values when working for the MODUL University
Vienna brand. Other than that, they are interested in the brand understanding of
employees of the university and would like to get an impression on how good faculty
and staff of MODUL University is aware of the university’s brand values. Thus, it would
interest them as well, how employees of the educational institution see the university
in the future.
66
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